Welcome! This blog is a laboratory wherein I conduct ongoing experiments with language. Sometimes those experiments manifest themselves in poetry, short story, personal narrative, or something new. Please check out my work and feel free to ask questions or make comments. I blog because I want to connect with other readers, writers, and thinkers - do not hesitate to contact me and even share links to your own work.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

R & J: Roz Chast's txt version - i lmao and u will lol 4 sure

Tonight I scoured the internet for fun texts and activities to incorporate into a Shakespeare unit for twelfth-graders. We are not reading Romeo & Juliet, because (a) most students have already studied it by senior year and (b) it sucks. Seriously.

R & J is by far Shakespeare's most overrated and overstudied play. It always saddens me that for the majority of American students, R & J – and at times the similarly hackneyed Macbeth and Hamlet – constitutes the extent of their exposure to Shakespeare. Clueless teachers continue to argue that the "star-crossed lovers" conflict in R & J resonates with hormonal teenagers. I have found that teens actually tend to dislike R & J and that if they must read Shakespeare at all they would rather read those plays that have more compelling characters than a fickle dude and his ridiculous young wife. Some alternatives: Othello or The Merchant of Venice, both of which concern issues of race relations and religious persectution still prevalent today and contain complex characters. One of these plays could be paired with one of The Bard's nuttier plays, such as Titus Andronicus.

At any rate, during my online hunt for useful teaching ideas and texts, I came across this hilarious interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. It's a modern version of the play by the brilliant Roz Chast of The New Yorker. i lmao when i read it. pls take 2 min & c 4 urself- u will luv it and lol